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SpotLight

There are some films that you watch and then instantly forget about, there are some that you can’t stop talking about with your friends and then there are those kind of films that are not easy to watch, much less write about and Spotlight is one of them.

Spotlight is the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core. When Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) joins the Boston Globe he picks up on a few stories they have run over the years that link to the catholic church and he pushes the investigative branch called Spotlight to look into the situation in more detail.

The investigate team is a small team that typically picks their own stories and being told to follow a story starts to create conflict within the paper but when they start investigating they find that not only is this a story that must be told but one that must be told right. The team is comprised of Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian d’ Arcy James) and led by Walter Robbie Robinson (Michael Keaton).

Along the way they encounter Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci) who is a lawyer that was involved in some of the early stories that the globe published and is also someone who works with the victims. Mitchell Garabedian primarily works with Mike Rezendes in this film and there interactions were really interesting to watch as the actors who played them put in strong and believable performances.

In fact the entire cast of Spotlight put in incredible performances and it was great to see such an amazing group of actors working together to tell a story that is not easy to tell. Audiences will never really know what it was like to uncover a story such as this but at least the film is able to give people a sense of what it must have been like.

Seeing as this is a story about an investigate branch of the Boston Globe, it was interesting to see how it progressed and as an audience you really do feel like you are watching the process as it unfolds. Finding the information, talking to people and covering all sides of the story are what this film focusses on, seeing the frustrations and complications of uncovering made Spotlight real and believable.

Another way it achieves this is by having so many layers, as the film progresses it starts to peel back those layers and it is this which keeps audiences hooked right until the very end. As they get closer and closer to publishing the story emotions begin to rise in the audience as well as in the actors who just want to see the story get told, as long as it gets told well and this film does exactly that.

Even though I was already aware of the story they were uncovering there was nothing that could prepare me for how it ended, reading the text at the end and seeing the places affected was harrowing to say the least.

Spotlight is a very well made film featuring an all star cast that does an incredible job of telling a difficult story and I want to say well done to Tom McCarthy for directing such an exceptional piece of cinema. This is not an easy film to watch and it will leave a lasting impression but if you haven’t seen it then I would highly recommend that you do.